Overspending in New Jersey Prisons and Correctional Facilities

It's phenomenal how much the taxpayers of New Jersey have to pay each year to the Department of Corrections' total budget to house and take care of inmates. If you think the cost of an Ivy League education is high, then consider what New Jersey taxpayers shell out on average to keep one inmate locked up at the N.J. State Prison in Trenton for one year. $44,000 on average.  That's $7,000 more than the annual tuition at Princeton, which is rougly $37,000.

The New Jersey Department of Corrections’ expensive prison system includes 13 facilities and some 22,000 inmates and 6,000 corrections officers. Presiding over this is a $77 million administrative bureaucracy. But the administrative bureaucracy is the least of the state prison system’s costs. The Department of Corrections’ total budget tops a billion dollars (2.3 billion to be exact).

That makes it one of the priciest items in the state budget, exceeded only by such big-ticket programs as school aid and Medicaid. The New Jersey prison system’s annual cost tops the budget of the entire state court system by $400 million and is triple the Department of Environmental Protection’s budget. Tax dollars apportioned yearly to the prison system exceed the sum allotted to the Department of Children and Families. A significant factor in the cost of keeping criminals behind walls and bars is the force of unionized corrections officers assigned to perform that duty. The always potentially dangerous job in unpleasant surroundings earns 55% of the officers command salaries of $70,000 or more for doing the job, according to the state Civil Service Commission.

But what else exactly is making these costs so outrageous? There's a number of accountable reasons to explain the high cost. One reason is because of the high percentage of people that are minimum security inmates. According to a recent report, nonviolent offenders make up more than 60% of prison and jail populations.  Furthermore, nonviolent drug offenders account for about one-fourth of all offenders behind bars. The report concludes that the current bail system keeps an inordinate number of low-risk offenders incarcerated at taxpayer expense.

“I agree that there are too many minimum-security inmates incarcerated due to drug addiction and mental illness,” said Steve Newsom, a lieutenant with the Gloucester County Department of Correctional Services. “At what point are we going to be our brother’s keeper and rehabilitate the individuals?" If we put the money that is spent incarcerating them into rehabilitating them, the world would be a better place.” The Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for drug law reform, plans to push for legislation that would give inmates alternative options for getting released as they await trial and institute a risk assessment system for non- violent offenders. If passed, this type of reform could save the state a huge sum of money yearly.

An increase in elderly inmates (50 or over) in New Jersey State prisons also explain an increase in budget expenditures. Since 2000, the number of prisoners over age 50 in New Jersey's state prisons has jumped nearly 90%. Now nearly 3,000 older prisoners are in the state's eight adult correctional institutions. If it costs New Jersey an average of $71,000 to care for each elderly inmate, as one study suggests, that would cost taxpayers $21.3 million, which is almost double the cost for the same number of younger, healthy inmates. The increase in cost annually is primarily driven by much higher healthcare costs for the older population.

But what can we, citizens of New Jersey, do to help lower the annual costs of prisons to stop waste of taxpayer's money? There are many legislations and reforms out there that are trying to change the ways prisons work financially in order to save money in the budget. It ranges from making prisoners pay for small amounts of things so the state doesn't have to completely pay for everything (Sex offenders have to pay for monitoring devices with their own money, 2-3K each), to passing legislation that would permit minimum-security or elderly inmates to leave early(less cost yearly, decrease population in prisons). There are many organizations and reform programs in New Jersey that need your support to succeed in passing bills. My goal is that hopefully, the money the state saves from any reforms to its correctional facilities can be redistributed to other parts of the budget, including going towards grants and scholarships.